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Mobile internet use in the Philippines is growing rapidly, but so are associated digital inequalities. I've just published a new research report with my colleague Kevin Hernandez based on our study in the Philippines, which suggests that far from creating equality of access to information, the use of mobile and internet technologies is creating new class divisions in technology access and new forms of digital inequality. In the report we emphasise the need to add ‘analogue complements’ to our digital development initiatives in order to ensure that they don’t unintentionally exacerbate existing social inequalities.

The Philippines is famous as the text message and social media capital of Asia and has the highest growth rate in smartphone ownership in the region. There are more mobile phone registrations than people in the country. So on the surface it seemed like the perfect place to launch new digital governance initiatives and to research digital governance technologies.

The last few weeks have been super busy here in the Digital and Technology team at IDS. I'm preparing for fieldwork in the Philippines at the same time as we are juggling a raft of exciting new research proposals at various stages of development. Last week we also ran the inagural Digital Development Summit at London's South Bank Centre.

As recently as 2011, at an international conference, an expert from Africa's first and foremost Tech Hub estimated that there might be as many as 14 or 15 hubs across Africa. The truth was that no-one knew for sure how many existed. To try and get some accurate data on numbers, Lukonga Lindunda and I decided to initiate a crowdmap of Africa's Tech Hubs.

Given his philosophy of interconnectedness, the Buddha might be reduced to smiling compassionately at the technologically deterministic claims of some ICT4D folk that their ICT is the sole cause of a particular development outcome.

“Mobile Phones Promote Economic Growth” was the simple, technologically deterministic claim made by The Economist in 2007, citing as evidence Robert Jensen's now famous study of mobile phone adoption in India. In the single most cited piece of research in